The Factual Opinion

The Big Fusion* by Michel Fiffe

Some of the most interesting and liveliest art in mainstream superhero comics have come from of an indie army of alt stars, web darlings, and aspiring cartoonists whose unique thumbprints have yet to be molded by a house style. It’s a pleasant thing, this crossover of sensibilities, and a lot of the times it comes with a sense of humor, but it doesn’t come free from tension. Despite what the comic book cognoscenti will have you believe, “mainstream” and “indie” are two very different camps with opposing sets of rules, further divided by splinter groups. You may think these outmoded terms, especially in our age of such diversity, but to not admit that the world of American comics is split in two is just delusion dressed up as optimism.

DIVISION LINES

Before this dovetails into a discussion about what is and what isn’t, allow me a few brief examples: Hellboy, Grendel and Nexus are all aesthetically mainstream looking, despite their independent and creator owned roots. They can easily fit into the Marvel line up as opposed to something like Boiled Angel or Grit Bath or anything from Fort Thunder. The world of comics has gotten pretty expansive in the past decade, but there remain the two dominant categories in which all of it is shuffled under. So if it seems as if I’m analyzing the issue with broad stokes, it’s because comics still identify themselves in the same way. 

I don’t need to further explain the minutia of what makes both camps incomparable, but the fundamental differences are their respective visual expectations and editorial mechanisms. I’m not saying this is a good or a bad thing, I’m just saying that it simply is. The last thing I want to do is to promote the rift. Instead, I’m here to point the rift out in order to celebrate the rare occasion when it is bridged.

HISTORY TIME

Plastic Man started it. This was the first superhero comic that, back in 1941, had humor as a main ingredient combined with straight up super heroics. Most of it was slapstick by nature, which suited Jack Cole’s style perfectly, and it still retained a sense of adventure that featured a character with more personality than the entire National Publications line combined.

Then there was Harvey Kurtzman, the man who gave comics a satiric voice through the pages of MAD in the 50s. For that alone we should be thankful, as one of Kurtzman’s strengths was humor, but we should not forget his narrative verve and his “truth in writing” philosophy. When it came to MAD, though, superheroes were just another subject to be made fun of, a fairly easy and sterile target at that point, but one that yielded funny results under Kurtzman’s direction.

              
 
It wasn't until Marvel Comics came along, when Stan Lee made Jack Kirby’s monsters depressed and Steve Ditko’s teenagers neurotic, that superheroes got deeper, ironic, and actually pretty funny. I understand that the people at the DC offices looked down on Marvel and yet were perplexed by their ever-increasing popularity.

Lee kept his comical, pseudo-Shakespearean tone during the tail end of the 60s, but Marvel quickly turned inward, angst ridden, and formulaic. Not Brand Echh, Marvel’s MAD knock-off, was the only place they attempted to developed a funny bone. The occasional Kirby or Marie Severin piece was worth the read, but it didn’t have the spark that MAD displayed on its worst day. Discounting Howard the Duck, Marvel didn’t have a “humor” book until What The--?! during the late 80s, but reading that title is like watching a comedian deliver in-jokes to himself all night. It’s made worse if you actually get the references.      

It’s worth noting that Kurtzman had his own project at Marvel/Epic called Strange Adventures back in 1990. This modest effort lampooned several genres to varying degrees of success, but it definitely utilized a set of artists that otherwise wouldn’t have worked for Marvel, such as William Stout and Robert Crumb.           

The undergrounds and the alternatives are largely defined, but not limited to its levels of humor. And yet, they never flirted with the idea of crossing over, which was probably based more on disinterest on their part than anything else. Can you imagine how great a Punisher story by Spain would be?

Mainstream comics had their blips of art weirdos throughout time, but even guys like Mark Badger or Kevin O’Neill were too well versed in the superhero language to represent the avant-garde. When you talk about true blue alternative folks drawing capes for cash, there simply wasn’t any room or time for that kind of comic. Chester Brown, Mark Beyer and Kaz were too busy staking claim in their own territories to fuck around with the Doom Patrol. The closest you were ever gonna get was if Jaime Hernandez did a spot illustration for The Comics Journal.

            

IT BEGINS

This brings me to the clearest point of origin of the unholy indie/superhero marriage, Coober Skeber #2 from 1997.  Edited by Tom Devlin, this unauthorized anthology was a portent of things to come. Marvel tried to put the kibosh on the book through legal means, but it didn’t stop it from circulating. Free from editorial restriction, and with contributors like Mat Brinkman and Ron Rege Jr., Coober Skeeber #2 is the prototype for this kind of material. It remains a milestone in its carefree but focused enthusiasm.

One of the stories from Coober Skeber was James Kochalka’s “Hulk vs. Rain”. This story caught the eye of writer Kurt Busiek, who showed it to Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, who then ran it in the Incredible Hulk 2001 Annual. I’m not sure why it took four years to get it colored and reprinted, but I remember it being pretty funny to see this 4 pager in the back of an actual Marvel comic.

Before Marvel fans at large saw Kochalka’s wuvable Hulk fighting the rain, DC fans got a little taste a year before thanks to Evan Dorkin’s World’s Funnest, Nov. 2000. This epic battle of the gods was a good enough excuse to get David Mazzucchelli drawing superheroes again and Frank Miller drawing Batman after a decade long hiatus. More importantly, and more along the lines of Strange Adventures, Jaime Hernandez and Jim Woodring were brought into the fold.  

In the same year, Marvel let Peter Milligan and Mike Allred take over X-Force. By 2002, Peter Bagge was given an entire issue’s worth of whatever he wanted to do with Spider-Man. Dean Haspiel drew for Spider-Man: Tangled Web, Muties, and X-Men Unlimited. Haspiel and Dorkin even collaborated on a Thing mini-series. Something was going on. Was it possible for the underdogs to break through and make decent livings drawing superheroes on the side? This seemed like a good, natural step in making comics fun again, or at least more varied.

              

DC Comics had their own official collection of novelty acts in the form of Bizarro Comics. It was pretty alarming to see the names Sam Henderson, Danny Hellman and Ivan Brunetti in a DC line up. These stories were enjoyable, but by the second edition in ’05, Bizarro World, the concept’s delivery proved to be underwhelming. Both volumes suffered from a sense of restriction, probably due to the DC policy that doesn’t allow creators to write and draw their own stories unless the creators are incorporated. The tag-team feel of those books seemed arbitrarily fun at first, but it mostly worked against the promise of the book. Dave Cooper and Tony Millionaire should just be left to write their own stories is the point I'm trying to make.

                

That’s one of the inherent drawback of these things. What’s the point for these artists to be allowed to roam this territory if they can’t be themselves while doing so? The biggest criticism of this entire trend is precisely that: if these guys are asked to whip up something different looking, doesn’t a heavy editorial policy undermine their perceived value? Results and conditions may vary, but then why not get top grade talent to work on c-list characters under the company’s “adult” line under minimal restraint? Put Jason T. Miles on Dr. Fate, have Michael DeForge take apart Alpha Flight, let Lauren Weinstein revive Atari Force. Both sides of the fence deal in the ridiculous already, so why not grab these quaint ideas and take them further? 

What we have here is a generation that grew up reading everything, absorbing all sorts of things at a rapid pace. That is what’s at the heart of this new trend. We all just love things and stuff, so it makes sense to mix those things up and see what sticks.  

Back to the countdown. Next up is Project: Superior and its subsequent Superior Showcase series. In the wake of Bizarro, this book pretty much showed them how it’s done. At the prompting of Haspiel, co-editor/publisher Chris Pitzer curated this anthology with superheroes as the theme (additionally, Scott Morse was pulled in as third editor). Creators were allowed to do whatever they wanted and even thought the results are 70/30, its heart was in the right place. Curiously, Pitzer hasn’t gone back to print for the sold out and in-demand anthology, probably assuming that the contributors would reprint their stories elsewhere. This hasn’t been the case, which only makes the book all the more special (and the perfect opportunity for Ebay prices to skyrocket).

Currently we have Marvel’s Strange Tales series, est. 2009. It took several years and a handful of editors to bring these stories to fruition, but the results were worth the wait. Nick Gurewitch, Kate Beaton and Nick Bertozzi delivered the goods.

You may not get to see Johnny Ryan really let loose Prison Pit style, but you still get to see Johnny Ryan do something at Marvel. You may complain that Strange Tales didn’t feature Kevin Huizenga’s masterpiece, but at least he produced a fun little story that got him paid and gave him a bit more exposure. You can’t pay the rent with that last one, but it may’ve been worth it if a single Marvel Zombie went away being mildly curious about Ganges.

Plus, when was the last time you saw Beto doing anything for Marvel?

 

Corporate entities don’t have to allow this kind of work to occur and yet they’ve been letting it happen with more and more frequency. Is it good for business to have Wolverine be a crybaby who stuffs his face with hot dogs? I don’t think it matters and I’m not going to pretend like I know the answer to that one, but it at least offers something a little different and it employs these creators.

COMPANY MEN

As a fan of the combination I’ve been talking about, I was driven to amass and edit the recent Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies collection. Editing that book was a terrific opportunity to not only work with characters I’ve enjoyed since childhood, but to work with many of my esteemed peers. Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen was kind enough to let us run hog wild with his characters. The overall results were fun and the contributors gave some of their best work to date. As the project was coming to an end, though, I felt a pang of guilt for having asked these busy, hardworking people to produce free work. How dare I? Just because I was used to giving away my content on the web for years, and most of them have as well, doesn’t make it kosher. I’ll make myself clear: Image Comics, the book’s publisher, has a royalties-based deal, meaning that there is no page rate and no up front money. Royalties were never really expected since the material originally ran as back up features and a collection wasn’t in the original plan. We all understood that deal and if anything, creators were always free to sell original art or sell their comps. Still, I couldn’t help but awkwardly feel that I had somehow contributed to the increasingly common industry-wide habit of Work-For-Free.

This raises an important issue, particularly for struggling indie set: cartoonists working for free with exposure as currency and the grooming of a hypothetical audience as a promise. This may be fine for younger cartoonists who are hungry and ambitious, but so is everyone else in comics, especially those who’ve already been around the block and haven’t struck gold (or reasonable employment). Blogs like Covered, Repaneled, and DC Fifty, TOO! are fun to look at, but when you take the legwork involved and measure it up to the compensation (it’s all free work), it doesn’t add up. Exposure is difficult to quantify, but maybe not so much when you consider the value of new eyes on your work. I’d like to hear some success stories from this business model, even though they’d probably be the exceptions to the rule. I should ask Dan Nadel if the numbers on Cold Heat went up after Frank Santoro’s Strange Tales story came out, at least to kill my earlier assessment regarding mainstream exposure having any cache.

But at least Frankie got paid. I can’t bring myself to make the connection between these penniless cartoonists, artists, and bloggers who express their love for these properties and their work acting as free advertisement for companies that wouldn’t normally hire them. I won’t make a comparison to peasants clamoring over royal attention, but it is a demented hierarchy whether we like it or not. It’s no longer fan art glamorizing the work of a few old bullpenners in the 70s, it is a couple of unstoppable empires. Is it really necessary to give these companies yet more face time rather than to our own ideas? Mainstream fandom is willingly hypnotized by and deeply involved with the corporate comics mechanism. You can hardly blame them; they learned their lesson back in the 90s and have pretty much sworn off anything “different”. So nevermind, PictureBox, I think I just answered my own Cold Heat question. Allegiance is a two way street, after all, and Marvel’s definitely going to be there for you every Wednesday for the rest of your life. My question is: where are the art blogs dedicated to Target and Chase?

NEUTRAL ZONE

There’s always going be the occasional oddball who is granted bits of fanboy affection, such as James Stokoe or Raphael Grampa, but those guys have crossover appeal, so it’s peculiar that they’re not given more assignments. Chalk it up to demand versus editorial leeway. While it’s too bad a guy like Jim Rugg does’t work in mainstream comics more often, with his multi dimensional and easy to digest style, all is forgiven when Gary Panter does his thing (thanks to Farel Dalrymple and Jonathan Lethem’s Omega: The Unknown series). That those Panter pages even exist should be reason enough to throw a party.

       
There are certain cartoonists that don’t need any company’s permission to do inspired, crazy ass shit such as Benjamin Marra and Josh Simmons. They don’t wait for an editor to tell them to do-their-own-thing-but-within-reason. No permission was required for Dan Clowes to do the Death-Ray. Although not as detached as his Black Nylon story, the Death-Ray indeed featured a guy in tights pummelling . Clowes has more than enough skill and empathy to pull off something like the Death-Ray without coming across as patronizing. It isn’t seeped in nostalgia nor is it a vicious commentary, it is simply a great, solid comic story.

Clowes gets it, but his imitators don’t; when Tomine draws someone in spandex it’s not to show us how absurd and fantastic it can be, it’s to heckle and point out how banal of a concept superheroes are to him. We don’t need that sort of cheeky arrogance in any genre of comics. If he despises it so much, Tomine should follow Sammy Harkam’s example and never draw this type of material under any circumstance whatsoever.

And therein lies the rift. It doesn’t matter if Brandon Graham redraws a Kirby page or how thorough Comics Alliance is at unearthing redesigned JLA fan art or if Brian Chippendale blogs about dissolving the Avengers, this rift exists and is very real. Jon Vermilyea can beautifully draw Baxter all he wants, but it’s not at the Big Apple con where he’s gonna be selling those papers at.

Don’t get bummed out, reader! It’s no big deal. It’s just what it is. Think of the indie superhero genre as a neutral zone. This mash up of sensibilities, which is comics’ most accurate representative of modern culture, can only happen in that specific space it created for itself, as if it had to exist. This is where Team Comix really happens. The comics industry isn’t really a place where, forgive the Morrissey quote,  “everybody gets together at night and sticks custard pies in each other’s face.” It seems as if that were the case sometimes, but it is far from the truth. These superhero alt comics, corporate or not, make a fine enough substitute.

--Michel Fiffe, 2011

*The term "Fusion" should be credited to Frank Santoro, who coined the term during his years of discussing the bending of art styles in comics. Read/listen to this to further explore the concept at its core. The Factual Opinion apologizes for any misunderstanding.

My Wife: Just Found Out About The Samurai Rabbit

Usagi Yojimbo #139
By Stan Sakai
Published by Dark Horse Comics 

Well, here's a comic that starts right in the middle of the action! 

4
I was a little confused at first. But I think that would be expected of anyone who is completely new to reading this comic--it is, after all, issue 139. So my hat is off to Stan Sakai for giving the characters very distintive differences so that, by the second page, I could tell who was fighting whom, even if I didn't know who they were yet. On top of that, it's all in black and white - so there was no "the guy in the green against the guy in the red," shortcuts to be had. It was the little things--amongst all that energetic drawing, it was clear that the guy with the super thick black eyebrows was fighting the cat with the black top knot. I know that sounds simplistic and maybe even insulting to the art. I don't mean it that way at all! I think it's a genius move on the part of Sakai to make page 2 of issue 139 easily accessible to a person, such as I, who is picking up this comic for the first time. 

And I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was fun to "watch", or rather, read this fight. The reason I can't believe I'm saying that is because, well, the fighting doesn't usually do it for me. I mean, its fun to watch some criz-azy martial arts stunts in some of those samurai movies....but not that often. In print, it usually doesn't thrill me. But I found myself intently pouring over these panels to see what happened next.

I found myself along for the ride of this jaunty comic without even thinking about it. It was so enjoyable. From the personification of animals to that levitating death symbol hovering above a character's head to let us know that he/she is dead--there's all kinds of stuff in here to enjoy. But it was the second part, the section that takes place in the dining room of a small inn, that I loved the most. 

That second section of the comic features what you might describe as an accidental dinner party--a bunch of strangers, stuck together due to circumstance. Everyone is uber-polite as they introduce themselves except for those who end up being ultra-rude, mostly due to class. Like in this case: "I am travelling to visit an important customer, Lord Yamaoka. Accompanying me is my daughter, Ayano.....and my useless assitant, Hoku." It's the same kind of lowkey humor you see in British costume dramas, accented here by the fact that all the characters are animals.

Even better, there's the narcissism of our "poet" and his horrible, horrible poetry! Many years ago, before Myspace and Facebook (even before Friendster! ask your gramps!) I hung out on Craiglist all day while I was at work. I know that seems odd, but it was a proofreading job. You learn about yourself when you're a proofreader. Like, how do you hang out on Craigslist, for one. Well (and I think I mentioned this in a review a long time ago), the Missed Connections board used to be wildly active and creative, until everybody got blogs. Aside from trying to find and hook-up with people via this message board, many a writer and/or comedian would come and write posts about having a Missed Connection with their pants, or their future, etc. Somewhere along the line, one day (or one week) haikus turned into a thing. Missed Connections in a haiku format. I was all involved in that (again, proofreading!), and I can tell you this because I had a mini-crash-course from a guy in haiku writing. And while I might not be an expert haiku critic, I can, with all accuracy, recall how the haikus in this part of Usagi Yojimbo would have been treated on "the boards". NOT WELL! God, I LOVED this part. It was like getting an inside joke. Kind of. Also: animals!

And spoiler alert: it all reminded me of a murder mystery movie, as it should since this issue is a murder mystery. I didn't expect it to have that whole feeling looking at the cover or laughing along with it, but having finished reading it, I can see how everything was perfectly set up to tell that story. And while this is a comic book with a lot of fighting and (sort of) violence, I found it really cute. I think it's a great comic for kids as well as adults. I was just really pleasantly surprised by the whole thing. How have I not read this before? Will I read it again?

I sure hope so.

-Nina Stone, 2011

Comics Of The Weak: This Is Like Having Sex With A Spanish Teddy Ruxpin

Captain America and Bucky #621
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Chris Samnee
Published by Marvel Comics

This is a pretty likeable comic--pretty heavy on the whimsy, like all the scripts were written in a field under a tree and they're all around nice-lookin' too--but each issue has had one little pit you gotta spit out, like a bad pear in a bag, a something-something, we all got one. (Metal rakes on concrete, if you're asking.) In the first issue, it was the way Brubaker set up Bucky's Final Training Round, which consisted of a teenager being set upon by grown ass men for an audience made up of "some dude" and Steve Rogers, who grunted and mumbled in a nearby Jeep, like he was going to a drive-in with the old guy who hires Arnold in Predator. In this issue, it's when Steve and Bucky--who is a totally nice looking boy, but sometimes appears to be a totally nice looking girl--head out to meet an undercover secret agent type who works at the fair. That's all well and good, but isn't it gonna blow Mister Undercover's cover for Steve to show up fully decked out in a tan I'm An Army Dude outfit? Isn't that sort of why the dude ends up dead by the end of the evening? Punching, sure, but c'mon. Dude got killed.

Graveyard of Empires #2
Written by Mark Sable
Art by Paul Azaceta & Matt Wilson
Published by Image Comics

Two issues into this four issue mini-series, and it's becoming pretty obvious that Mark Sable really doesn't want to write a comic about zombies at all. Which is totally understandable! Still, you have to wonder what he thinks is going to happen when zombie readers show up--because really brah, non-zombie readers are only going to arrive upon something like this by accident--and find out that the comics spends most of its second part (of four) flashing back before the zombies attack, after an entire first issue that didn't really do anything with zombies until the last couple of pages, which is when everybody went "ah, zombies". If he's doing it this way in preparation of whatever movie deal he's shooting for, then it even makes less sense--there's no reason to start cutting the budget this early, that's what producers are for. Oh well. If you're just looking for a sleazy warsploitation comic, or you want to look at Paul Azaceta but have an allergy to Northlanders, this is the only current available option, as long as you ignore all the other options ever made, as they are all currently available. But if for some reason you can only choose amongst the most recent single issue comics that have been published--there is no reason why this is the case, but I like thought games, in thought games I still live at home and we sleep in family bed--then Graveyard of Empires is the best option to fulfill your needs.

Daredevil #2
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera & Javier Rodriguez
Published by DC Comics

While this issue comes up short on the Marcos Martin front, Paolo Rivera continues to bring an A-game that I'm ashamed to admit I didn't even know he had, while Mark Waid continues moving this title back into straight-up-spandex-stuff and away from Oh Shit I Fucked Some Girl And Now She Is Dead, this time with a basement full of crazy robots. There's also a fight with another super-hero. That's pretty much it. Fight with super-hero (that looks really great), some jokes with the shlub friend (those are just fine), a set-up that lets Daredevil use his powers, and then...crazy 'bots, in a basement. This comic really does make everything around it look completely dire, just from a basic craft level. It's lovely, lovely work.

Flashpoint Project Superman Man O'War Number Three
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Lowell Francis
Published by DC Comics

Zero idea what this was supposed to be about, just thought it was funny that it takes place in the time between a couple of pages in Flashpoint and will be continued in a later issue of Flashpoint. You know how people who don't read super-hero comics--I'm not talking about Drawn & Quarterly types, I'm talking about real people that don't read super-hero comics--always try to talk shit about super-hero comics, and they're always just off by a little bit, but it's enough that you kind of feel like defending super-hero comics, even if you basically agree with them that almost all super-hero comics are fucking terrible? Like, somebody will talk about how there was a rape in Identity Crisis, but then they'll amp it up a little too much, they'll describe something "they heard about" that actually didn't happen, like a scene where Lex Luthor was getting head while watching a video of the rape, it was in Superman, you know, those issues where he wore the green suit, I think Jeph Loeb wrote 'em, that kind of thing? Well, those people: that's who this issue of Project Superman is for. It's a comic that actually takes place between two scenes in a much bigger "more important" comic, a comic that you absolutely do not have to read to understand Flashpoint, but you better not try to read on its own unless you want to be totally, irrevocably lost. This is one of those super-hero comic that people who hate super-hero comics make up when they're trying to explain why they don't read super-hero comics. So next time, cut them a break. In their leg. Do it with a knife. Because they probably exploit women for sex, just like Peppermint Patty. And she's a vampire. Also? AIDS. You read that right. AIDS.

Uncanny X-Force #13
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Mark Brooks, Scot Eaton, Andrew Hennessy, Andrew Currie & Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics

While X-Force seems to be rapidly nearing the point where it'll stop being an engaging X-Men comic for those of us who like our paste pre-chewed and turn right back into a regular X-Men type comic with a bunch of detailed convultions about who-blew-who, and which paddleboat they did it in, it's not totally there yet, and the prospects of a much better art team may still bring this fucker out of the power dive it's been in for the last month or so. This thing's failings are to be expected, even if Marvel hadn't decided to pump the thing out like they needed comics to plug a busted toilet main--it's a story set in some alternate reality that most of us don't-give-a-fuck-at-all, that's-why-we-read-X-Force readers know shit about, and its cliched beats are only aggravated further when having to plow through not one, but two Wolverines as they argue and pick at each other over the pleasures of mating with a still breathing Jean Grey. (Based off of Miss Grey's outfit, the apocalypse did little to diminish the global supply of latex and those invisi-bra cup things.) Oh well, as they say: this relationship was never meant to last for the long term.

Batman Incorporated #8
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Scott Clark & Dave Beatty
Published by DC Comics

So weird. You should probably see what it looks like. Here's what it looks like:

The whole comic looks like that. It's terribly irritating to read--not in that way where "I had to pay attention and I don't wanna, this must be lousy", just in that way where the visual part of your brain knows that what it's seeing is the unfinished components of 90's era computer imaging, and it keep setting off an alarm in the logic center of your brain, saying "hey, we've moved past ugly shit like this, there's no reason to look at ugly shit like this"--and ignoring that part of your brain, which is basically just trying to help you, that weird feeling is called struggling against biological self-preservation, and there's just no getting around how obnoxious that is. And for what, really? A Batman comic? A Batman comic that fails to do any of the stuff you go to Batman comics for? Something unfun, being unfunny? Something boring? Hell, there's people in the world, bosses and coworkers, subordinates and subordinance, those things can be unfun, unfunny, boring: they probably aren't this strident, either. What it's most like is being yelled at by somebody from another room that you don't have any obligation to listen to--after a while, you just stop paying attention, becuase hey, fuck them: they ain't the boss a' you.

That stuff Grant Morrison said in that interview was pretty irritating, even when you go into it knowing its just really smart marketing, because seriously: it's Rolling Fucking Stone. When's the last time Rolling Stone was even kinda/sorta relevant? They have pretty fantastic political reporting, don't get me wrong, but we're talking about a magazine that still talks about your favorite Led Zeppelin tunes and treats the Kings of Leon like they're on the cusp of relevance. And that isn't to say that Led Zeppelin sucks, just to say that my dad listens to Led Zeppelin and you don't get to be a relevant culture magazine if you're advertising dad shit all the fucking time. I don't want to be an old piece of shit anymore than anybody else does, but oh well and guess what: I'm an old piece of shit who went to high school when Kurt Cobain was still alive, boo hoo. And if I'm capable of realizing that magazines that do cover pieces on Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd is too old, even for a piece of shit like me, then yep, you better do something super-controversial to get me to pay attention to whatever it is you're putting between those adult diapar advertisments. Getting the premier comics writer--which he still gets to be, because Seven Soldiers rules your dick--to talk shit about comics premier artiste is sure going to wrangle up the blood, no matter how congealed it is. Does it matter that he didn't make any sense? It shouldn't, really. We're talking about a guy who still tells people he got kidnapped by hung out with aliens, even though he's clearly had enough time to have sobered up and realized that no, of course that didn't happen, why would that happen, what a crazy night that was, i'm so glad I didn't get her pregnant, aliens you gotta be kidding me--why not go ahead and let him think he's a working class hero, who lives in a gigantic house where he wears a purple suit, being pissed on by the likes of Chris Ware, who doesn't live in a gigantic house and seems to spend all his time listening to ragtime music. Ha ha ha! Fucking ragtime music! Like an asshole! Isn't that what assholes listen to? All the time? Dickhead! Fuck that dickhead!

Kind of lost the plot there. Wouldn't it be weird if Grant Morrison wrote a comic that you could climb inside, and when you got inside you could have sex with Batman? My biggest fantasy--i'm being really naked and honest with you guys right now--is that I could climb inside a Batman comic and become Lyla Garrity from Friday Night Lights. And then I'd have a three way with my wife Nina and Tim Riggins. Not the actors, mind you. I want to live in East Dillon and be a cheerleader, but I want my real wife to be there, and I'll be a lady with lady parts. And I'll do it lots. Inside a Grant Morrison Batman comic set in East Dillon. That's my dream. I dream it every night.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

 

Television of the Weak: Thursday Is The Bestest

Louie - "Duckling"

(Real quick, then we'll get into this: you know how that country singer said he was an Army Ranger? That's kind of selling it short. He was an Army Ranger here, when this happened. That dude can sing about toothpicks and ground water, he's got a lifetime pass.)

Hour long versions of thirty minute shows were most likely invented to increase some kind of revenue, but nowadays they seem to exist mostly so that television reviewers--even though that's what this post ostensibly is, I kind of still can't believe that "television reviewer" is a real thing--can use the word "overstuffed". And while I can't point you to somebody actually using that word to describe "Duckling", I'm certain the word came up, and I'm going to act as if you believe it did as well: if only so that I can say "nahfuckingway".

"Duckling" opens with CK's most direct admission of what all those Comedy Cellar bits are to date: they're exercises, barely promoted and "performed" for a small group of the lucky few. The Cellar sequences that make up the bulk of the show's stand-up material has always been Louis figuring out or adjusting his material, but this is the first time where he's so bluntly shown the gears involved. It's funny stuff, first about ducks, then a weirdly sweet bit on lions and giraffes. Better still, the unfinished lion bit doesn't really work, and you get the sense that Louis knows it never really will...which is why he relies on that crowdwork-honed shrug and raised eyebrows, that "I don't know man, I thought it was gonna work too" dismissal that puts the audience right in his pocket, whether they think animals are funny or not.

And then, it's off to Afghanistan, with the requisite stop for a scene that picks up a plot device (said device being a duck, from an idea contributed by CK's daughter). We meet--sort of, I never figured out whether both cheerleaders had lines or not, and that might have been confusing on purpose--the rest of our supporting cast, one of whom I already singled out (Keni Thomas, who played himself). Besides the duckling stowaway, the episode follows CK's actual USO tour diary as close as prudence and time contraint allows for. The emotional impact the experience had on him is blunted overall, and all political criticisms are nonexistant, but as his writings make clear, he wasn't too sure about those in the first place. The episode concludes on what are now becoming classic "Louie" tropes--him humiliating himself physically in an episode where almost all of his non-stand-up bits are him humiliating himself emotionally--and then it's over.

It's a good episode, harmed only by the fact that the longer story behind it is one that's just more touching. Some of the bits come across live, but others--like CK's actual relationship with the Christian cheerleaders, or why it was important that he go so gross in his routine--are either absent or impossible to depict. Luckily, all of those remain documented in a series of posts on his website.

Still the best thing on television though.

Childrens Hospital - "Party Down"

Man, that echo effect was a real pain in the ass.

"Hey mom. See you're still Chinese. I'll see you on China day."

NTSF: SD: SUV - "Tijuana, We've Got A Problem"

Some of this worked--the Rebecca Romijn split screen, the Applebees jokes, that list of reasons why Alaska is better than San Diego continues to grow--but they really should just let Rob Huebel write every episode. He's the only one who has figured out how to expand this beyond 75 seconds without turning it into a shitty version of the very thing it's supposed to be parodying.

Suits - "Shelf Life"

"You sound like Fraiser's brother" is the sort of low-belly pop culture reference that Suits normally pulls off well, but this time it came across as a little too much of a dad-joke. And since it fails to hurt the feelings of Lewis--whose teeth are particular large this time around, which is top-notch--it's even worse. No one wants to watch Harvey blow an insult. (That's Mike's job.) After what might be the greatest (its definitely the weirdest) "check my breath on my hand" moves ever broadcast on basic cable, Lewis heads over to pick up some random woman who will later participate in an unfinished subplot involving Lewis curling up in the fetal position. Harvey uses Lewis' absence to meet this episode's ultimate villain (hiss!) and we cut over to Mike, who is in the process of making out with his ex-best friends ex-girlfriend. (She's a blond whose name I always forget, and since Mike is actually in love with a brunette and this to-whose-charms-will-he-succumb conundrum forms one of the show's fundamental story arcs, I think of and refer to her as "Betty".)

Betty is boring as hell. However, so is Rachel, who I call Veronica. Also boring? Mike. Anytime there's a scene focusing specifically on those three people, it goes down like a lead balloon. Let's get back to the plot of this week's episode, which revolves around Mike being forced by Harvey to help take down an outdated model of Mike, i.e. an accountant who has been fooling his employers for years (he never got certified) and has a particular unusual skill for remembering numbers. Future Mike is played by one of those recognizable character actors who you see all the time. I think he was in that show about people who escaped a hostage situation, and then spent the rest of the season having flashbacks to the hostage situation. I never saw an episode of that show on purpose, but now I watch Suits all the time so I probably shouldn't get snobby.

One of those random things that happens on cheap shows like this is that their cheapness inadvartantly results in something unusual, making the show seem better than it really is: like in the scene where Mike gets undressed while Veronica/Rachel watches him. USA isn't about to give Mike a personal trainer, and while the actor playing Mike is pretty fit, he isn't fit enough to pull off a chick-gawking-at-him-topless scene. It's just sweet and weird for Rachel to be looking at him the way she is, like she's looking at Taylor Lautner in one of those virgin vampire movies, when in reality, she's looking at a guy you went to high school with. Any guy. At any high school. Still a lead balloon, but at least it went by quickly.

After this scene, some lady tries to break Harvey with words. It's kind of like watching a little kid try to knock over a tree with a piece of notebook paper. Since this is a USA show that's never going to break huge, you'll have to trust me on this: Harvey Spector is the sort of never-gonna-happen capitalism-with-heart fantasy man that appeals to 99% of this countries taxpaying base, and Gabriel Macht plays him like he's the Jason Bourne of talking-about-shit. Some low rent security thug tries to blackmail our boy Mike? No big deal. Harvey looks the dude up, figures out the security guy has been cheating on his taxes for five years and threatens to expose him. And then, Harvey still pays him the full blackmail, but the check is made out to the security guy's kid's baseball team. "You can steal from him, if that's what you want", is Harvey's basic message. (Actually, that's his second message. His first, which he makes clear in Macht's crystaline language-as-knives is that nobody fucks with Harvey Spector.)

The general war of the episode ends the way all of them have so far--Mike figures some shit out with his super brain, after some prodding from Veronica/Rachel who then kisses him, and then Harvey throws the truth down the enemy's throat, with talking. He's backed up by Gina Torres, who continues to make the viewer feel like "The Firm" exists for her character the same way D'Angelo felt about the boy Wallace, and then the episode ends with another grow-the-fuck-up lesson for Mike, this one a badass moment where Harvey sits in the dark and tells Mike to quit or quit bitching.

It was pretty dope.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Woodshed: Come On Irene

(Apologies for the disappearance it was unexpected and unwanted, channel resumes broadcast.)

Over at the Comics Journal, Tucker churned out the short dose praise for Winterworld (a Dixon/Zaffino joint) and SF (Ryan Cecil Smith's adventure in being very good, you could also check out Weird Schmeird #2, which is as good as good gets.)

Over at comiXology, the first in what will ultimately become three unfortunate choices is live, although various server problems have contributed to make it a bit of a pain to find. (Immediately after these articles were finished, I realized that writing about the first issues in DC's relaunch wasn't anywhere near as interesting as it would have been to imagine what the 27th issue of all 52 of these titles might be like, but don't let that stand in your way: there's jokes to be had.)

The Hooded Utiltarian's months-in-the-making best of list went up over the last few weeks, and they kindly asked me to join a pretty hell-on-wheels list of comics critics for the purposes of writing about Calvin and Hobbes, which Tim O'Neil doesn't care for. (Tim O'Neil jostles with Abhay Khosla for the best writer about super-hero comics you're going to find, I think, but I disagree with him on this one: I doubt America will collapse in response.) The Hooded's list has irritated all the people it's supposed to irritate, but its value will hopefully become apparent as the years go by. Comics history is basically written by specific individuals with specific goals--Art Speigelman's interpretation seems to be the current in-vogue one, although people like Jeet Heer or that book designer with the toy fetish and of course a litany of Paul Levitz-types are certainly working up their own narrative as we speak. An aggregate list is merely a brick in the longview, and considering that so many contemporary creators seem hell bent on chucking out every piece of history they find culturally complicated or historically obnoxious, there's definitely a benefit to be had in listing where the heads are at right now, especially as the pillars of super-heroes and the widespread comics communities continue toward their inexorable collapse.

Over at Dredd Reckoning, I teamed up with Douglas Wolk to look at Judge Dredd's Apocalypse War, which is currently sitting pretty as my all-time-fav Dredd story. (I'm working through a lot of the classics right now, so who knows how long that will last.) Wolk's set up over there is pretty fantastic--he's already moved onto the next Complete Case Files after the one we did together, and I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't already. 

Thanks to Shit Comics, I found out about and then read Chris Onstad's Chapbook 10, which is totally excellent stuff. It's interesting re-reading Onstad's "explanation" letter right alongside what's being promoted as the first Dave Chappelle interview in five years, for what I'd bet are obvious reasons. (Shit also caught this chunk of DeForge before most, praise due for that. This period of DeForge worship is definitely going to be the best part--there's no real focused hate directed towards the guy's work, we're all surrounded by people going "whoa" and "gnarly", and everything he drops seems like a next evolutionary step.) Here's a picture of a guy who looks like a serious person.

This response to that Grant Morrison sizzle reel from David Brothers is pretty fantastic.

Here's some Friday Night Lights stuff. That show was a juggernaut of sentimentality in the greatest way possible, it's pretty much The Shield of Feelings and Dads. My favorite part of this article is how the writer acknowledge that Tim Riggins (a fictional character) has almost superhuman control over all who witness his glory. It's totally true!

Ryan Hill reminded me of the weird, perfect lunacy that is Tim Cappello. Wasn't aware that Saturday Night Live remembered it as well. For some reason, that led to reading this--remember this article? This article was such a huge deal when it came out. Remember when magazine articles could be huge deals? I think the last time I heard about a magazine article being a huge deal was when Rolling Stone convinced Obama to fire a general, and even that seemed to blow over in about a week.

It's weird that This Long Century hasn't blown up yet, but it isn't like the site isn't perfectly set up as an excellent archive already. Lovely.

Your most recent installment in great Louis CK interviews, this time from GQ. Although the Papa-Demas bailed the land of GQ, here he is at Grantland ripping apart that television show David Simon made that isn't The Wire.

While my heart will probably always belong to Witzke (living) and Farber (dead), Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is definitely number two on the awesome film-writings tip. Here, he riffs on Raul Ruiz.

My two favorite negative reviews on the new Simon Reynolds book I'm going to read anyway: Martin Brown. Noel Murray. Here's the interview with Simon Reynolds that got me to pay attention in the first place.

Rupert Murdoch stuff, although we seem to have moved on from him as a news story.

Tim Hamilton comics, because I like them.

Best living cartoonist? He's my favorite.

This "How Did This Get Made" podcast is so good that it (plus WTF) has me listening to podcasts for the first time ever. Here they are on Green Lantern. It'll make you wish they could get some of that funny out of the podcast and into that San Diego SUV show.

This is the only interview/article I've ever finished reading about screenwriting, which strikes me as being the most unsatisfying job one could have that doesn't involve the food service industry or comics. Very funny stuff.

Here's a disappointing closer to this random series of links. "Suicided, like so many others."

Comics Of The Weak: Quit Calling Yourself A Creator, Everybody Goes To The Bathroom

The New Avengers #15
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Deodato & Rain Beredo
Published by Marvel Comics

This is a serious, adult comic about a Marvel character named Squirrel Girl, who was part of something called the Great Lake Avengers, which is one of those things that, in the upside down reality that is super-hero comic book fandom, that world where you're a fucking freaky freak-freak if you don't want to eat deep fried lamb covered in cashew butter ice cream off of a frozen antelope tibia while rooting for the Disney legal team to go thorax-deep in scat fingering Jack Kirby's corpse while Stan Lee's gigantic white chompers gnaw whole chunks of stringy flesh out of every 12-year-old girl's nethers when they dare to say "Apologies, but I prefer Twilight" in close proximity to the meat wheelbarrow or that creep with the hat who keeps pretending that editing Spider-man comics is hard (if it were hard, wouldn't they have hired somebody that doesn't embarrass America?), in that fucked up world, you're the asshole if you don't know where Squirrel Girl comes from. You're the dripping tooled shit covered prick of the world if you can't immediately call up a bunch of fond memories of that time Squirrel-Girl-did-this or that time Squirrel-Girl-did-that, blah blah blah, and now you can't come sit at the dirty-t-shirt cum-stains where grass-stains should be jean jacket table with the Sergeants of 40-year-old lead miniature girlfriends, all because you don't have some cornball best-man-style monologue to deliver about how the Great Lake Avengers were the surrogate back-patter you had in place of a best friend, and now you'll just have to go and sit at the table where all the assholes (those people who know when there taxes are supposed to be paid, those people who don't need a boycott as an excuse to not watch movies they know in advance are going to be shitty, those jerkwater foxes who don't need Eve Laurence to dress like Starfire to consumate some masturbation) are sitting. They call it the referendum.

Detective Comics #881
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Jock & Francesco Wario Francavilla
Published by DC Comics

The main reason this comic is confusing is obvious to anyone--the story was cut short when DC decided at the last minute to reboot their entire continuity, forcing Scott Snyder to come up with a new Batman arc for the new Batman comic he's doing with a new Batman artist. (That thing where they said the reboot was planned in advance? That's an actual full on lie, just so we're clear.) So Snyder had to come up with an abbreviated ending to his story, and he gave it to his artists, and these were the drawings they came up with to hide under the mountains of text on the page. (This is why the comic looks and reads like some late 80's joke about stereo instructions.) But there's a secondary reason why this comic is confusing, and that's this: it isn't a Batman comic. It's a comic about a cliched psychopath blathering endlessly to his most recent victim, and at the end, Batman shows up. But when he isn't there, what you're stuck with is page after endless page of a boilerplate crazy guy talking to his sister, who--because the only movie anybody at DC has ever seen was one of the Saw movies--he has just stabbed in the paralyzed legs with knives, both of which he has left in the paralyzed legs, which he only did so that he could pull what appears to be a tablecloth off of them like he's some kind of crazy magician. (Ta-da!)

Fear Itself #5
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger
Published by Marvel Comics

The best part about Fear Itself isn't going to happen for at least another ten years, because that'll be when Matt Fraction does an interview with whatever 2021's version of cross-comics-promotion-internetty thing is and finally reveals that he and Stuart Immonen had actually joined Steve Bissette's Marvel boycott months before the thing even became a public thing for cardboard city builders and recycling addicts to participate in. And really, while it takes balls to not read shitty comics (except for Daredevil, Deadpool Max and Uncanny X-Force) or watch shitty movies, it takes a lot more balls to boycott the very product you're actually in the process of creating and cashing checks off of the publication of, and that has to be the reason that Matt Fraction is making this horrible, horrible comic about how Iron Man is a crybaby life's-not-fair type and Spider-Man thinks saving people from burning buildings and kill-crazed Nazi robots is less important than hanging out with his shithead cockless milkslurping friends (who, if memory serves, are a bunch of ugly versions of Big Bang Theory characters that all hang out in the most half-ass imitation of the Friends coffeeshop since the How I Met Your Mother bar booth). Alternatively, it could be that Matt Fraction lost his fucking mind when they made him participate in that ridiculous "Marvel Architects" photoshoot, as that's what would happen to any sane person when they saw up close what Ed Brubaker was doing with his facial hair while at the same moment Brian Michael Bendis screeched "mincing, i'm mincing, mincing like I've never minced before". But then I saw that upcoming Casanova cover with the panda bear, and that's when I decided I liked the boycott idea more.

BPRD Hell On Earth Monsters #2
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Tyler Crook
Published by Dark Horse Comics 

The first issue was better than this, the second, but then again, there's a major character death hiding in classic unheralded fashion--apparently?--so maybe the praise that came down last time around was just a little too much, and now it's time for the requisite overcorrection. Therefore: the colors is in this are limp, and yet the credits page still says Dave Stewart. The behavior of Kate Corrigan is more similar to the Paul Hornschemeier character that Tyler Crook weirdly draws her as, but there's Arcudi & Mignola's names front and center. Overall, there's something off and unwieldy here--it's just not that good a read, and coming on the same week as The Fury, it's post-Mulder X-Files banality is all the more an aggravation.

The Spirit #17
Written by Howard Chaykin, Will Pfeifer & Paul Levitz
Art by Brian Bolland, P. Craig Russell & Joe Luis Garcia-Lopez
Published by DC Comics

While some might prefer the Howard Chaykin/Bolland female bodybuilder team-up, and others might get themeselves aflustered for Will Pfeifer's engaging journey into figuring out how many Art History references he can convince P. Craig Russell to draw, it's the Levitz story that'll most likely make you run screaming for the typewriter, only to find disappointment your wingman: there's no letters column to fire that missive towards, this is it, the Final Issue of the supposed-to-be-the-Shadow Spirit comic. And yet--there's something here, the idea of a guy like Levitz writing a story about--well, a guy like Levitz, an older gentleman still attached to a dying print industry, getting one last adventure with one of his inspirations and fantasies. So what if that adventure ends with the Levitz stand-in being crushed to death by his mountains of unwanted print media, his entire existence shrugged off by the random costumed hero who--unlike everyone else in that old man's world, as the story itself tells--just so happend to be the only person who knew that old man's name.

Hellboy The Fury #3
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Duncan Fegredo
Published by Dark Horse Comics

The easiest way to point out how good Hellboy comics are is to cast them alongside the shit they end up sharing shelf-space with. Just place one of these comics alongside anything else, and the comparison is so striking it hurts, and that's not just on the level of finished product, but all the way down in the constituent parts. Coloring: these look better than all DC or Marvel comics, even the rare ones where the artists are allowed to handle that part themselves. Writing: these are stronger, more cohesive stories whose references call to library cards and years of fannish obsessions. (Compare that to something as overly praised as Detective Comics #881, a comic whose main story was pirated off of quick scans of the internet popular Psychopath Test from a few months ago, a trick Scott Snyder learned from Google News copy n' paste hero extraordinaire, Warren Ellis). Visually: Duncan Fegredo's Hellboy style--something he cribbed only in part from Mignola layouts, the rest all his own, a seamless mixture of synthesized inspiration--began building a visual crescendo back in the drumbeats of The Storm's fall battles that concludes here with a bloody winter's cacaphony of collapse and brutal savagery, smashed heads, plunging claws and gut-to-throat cries of sorrow.

It doesn't do The Fury justice to play this game, of course. To couch these comics in better-than language, to lambast the surrounding tripe gives the tripe a merit it doesn't deserve, ranking them categorically belies the lie that they are related beasts. It's not only unfair, it's unseemly.

And yet...why not do it anyway? Why take the high road? Why pretend that it shouldn't be pointed out that other comic books--even other Mignola comics, like the anemic Baltimore--just don't belong in the same room with the accomplishment that this thing is? Shit--utter shit--like Fear Itself and Green Arrow and whatever that Flying Grayson thing is that lurks behind those awesomely out-of-place Cliff Chiang covers--continues to show up, often outselling Hellboy, all the while adamently refusing to learn anything from the model and maturity that Mignola has continuously provided for these many years. It's like DC and Marvel are that crazy woman on the View, that loudmouth slime who worships volume and indignation as if that will remake the world into the hard lined lair of simplicty her jello brain ejacualates itself to sleep in fantasy of. Why not call the ball as it lays and say thusly: these stories are better than comics deserve. Hail, hail.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

My Wife: Goes Beneath The Skin With Nobrow Press

How do you draw bleak? How do you illustrate the haunted, tortured soul residing inside a man? How do you communicate the unbearable?  

Obsolete
By Mikkel Sommer
Published by Nobrow Press 

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but Mikkel Sommer does. He knows them all. In Obsolete, he captures a bleakness so palpable I nearly wanted to put this comic book down and walk away from it to get some distance from the feelings it contained. I didn’t, but not just because I wanted to know “what happens next,” but because I wanted to see how Sommer would capture the emotions of whatever was next. The doing mattered here, but the telling mattered just as much.

This is a comic (it's hard to use that term as it's clearly more tragic then comic, but that's just grade school talking) with very little dialogue, exposition or narration. It tells a story with pictures in a way that only pictures can. It's a story, in a sense, that we’ve all heard and seen (mostly in movies) some variation on. A story of a veteran, haunted by his experience and unable to live a “normal” life after being at war. It illustrates how veterans, the ones who survive, end up becoming victims nevertheless, victims of something that may not be as final as death, but debiliates and annihilates just the same. Caught in that victimhood, they try endlessly to escape in all sorts of ways.

So, if we’ve seen it all before, why read this comic? Because, for one, ts easier to find the time to read this comic then it is to sit down and take in a two hour movie that has to slather more and more onto it just to beef up the runtime. Read it for its form, it's integrity. Read for a lesson in amazing storytelling and keeping it simple. It's pure. Did you, like I, learn in high school that the best way to write a succinct paper was to ask a question in your opening paragraph, and then in the final paragraph write “in  conclusion....” and clearly answer the question you asked and use the middle of the paper to prove your point? It's a stilted, structured system, but it's efficient. That efficency is what I found Sommer doing with this format. His drawings delivered emotion and story, momentum and pace, making the words unnecessary.

The first page shows our protagonist lying in bed - he’s under a blanket, his hairy chest bared, sporting long-ish hair, a beart and sweating profusely. On the last page, our man is lying the exact same way - centered in the page - only this time his eyes are closed rather than open, and he's not sweating anymore. I’m not sure what the question is that the doubling answers. His peace? His rest? I don't want to answer that, or maybe I'm just not sure I can. There's an angry orange, a rusted red palate thoughout this book, one that feels like heat, like a desert or a dry box. By that last page, I felt like I'd been out in the heat too long...tired, dehydrated, loopy in a way that wasn't funny. I can't imagine that wasn't on purpose. I can't imagine I'm not under another's control.

The whole book is lovely to look at. It's a true pleasure to hold in ones hands, one of the most well made comics I've ever touched. There's a weight to the book and the pages are sturdy. I found the whole thing so easy to read and get lost in. It's one of those comic books that makes me feel glad that comic books exist, and grateful that I had the opportunity to read this story.

However painful. However poignant.

-Nina Stone, 2011 

 

Comics Of The Weak: Didn't Realize Ya'll Liked To Get Wet

Pizza, punk-rock horse whispering, James Leonard's Magic, air conditioning, more pizza, learning at the feet of Lazzarus. You missed it? You must live in the wrong place. You? You should move.

ipso facto:

Captain America & Bucky #620
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Chris Samnee
Published by Marvel Comics

No kidding around: while it wasn't "wrong" to kill off the Bucky character, and people like Tom Brevoort (people who wear old porkpie hats and dirty t-shirts to press conferences, people who take Newsarama seriously, people who call intercourse "giving the jew some bacon", people just like Tom Brevoort) are right to tell weener peeners to suck it up and fuck themselves and their slimy fivers right over to Dark Horse or those Game of Thrones things if they don't like the twists and turns that the Marvel roller coaster keeps on-a-taking. That's not wrong, so he's right. But that doesn't mean killing Bucky wasn't a stupid, meaningless thing to do, it doesn't change the fact that it took place in a comic that no one likes (and rest assured, even Kelly Sue DeConnick thinks Fear Itself sucks the balls, and she's sharing toothpaste with its writer), and it's okay--for the next part to work, you have to let me be the mommy, and let mommy give you the permission--to be a little chapped off about the whole state of affairs. Hell, use that feeling as an excuse to ignore the other Captain America comic, the one that Steve McNiven is...well, I guess you call that drawing, you certainly wouldn't mistake it for sandwich making. Skipt hat one, you won't miss a thing, and you can slather all that attention right atop this little boner sandwich, which is a comic about the good old days, when lil' Bucky got flown somewhere in a cargo jet so that he could beat up the original Seal Team 6 right in front of an army jeep, and sitting in that army jeep, falling in love for the first time: Sterling Steve Rogers, the man himself. Doesn't that sound like the sort of warm blanket that'll get you lindy hopping again?

Detective Comics #880
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Jock & Dave Baron
Published by DC Comics

What kind of half-ass psycho comes to town with an extensive new mystery play that'll hide his craze-balls loony brain all so that he can pull back the curtain in about a week's time? Oh, the kind that gets his story remixed and then full on aborted so the deck can be ready for the new Batman comics. So now that we're staring down at the conclusion, how much do you want to bet that there's going to be some really treacly monologuing in the next issue of this kinda-gross story where Commissioner Gordon's lunatic (and super evil! he dismembers people and strips his own mother naked for the torturing!) son explains that the whole reason he's crazy as fuck (but not so crazy that every part of his plan doesn't work out totally the way he wants it to) is because wah fucking wah wah he fell off a bridge and got caught by a guy in a motorcycle jacket when he was a diaper-filling baby. Gawd, you ever meet those kinds of people? The ones who attribute even the most minor personal failings to some barely remembered slight from their youth? I once knew a girl who worked as a greeter at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory in Times Square, and she got in trouble with the boss because she told a party of four about her conviction that her uncle had probably molested her when she was but a wee infant. Now, I know what you're thinking: how the hell does that conversation even begin to happen? The party-of-four/restaraunt-greeter relationship hangs on one, easy question: there's just no sane way to work it back to the womb. Even then though, she had more of a leg to stand on then our little Jimmy G Junior (actual name!), who you just know is going to blame his addiction to Hannibal Lector behavior completely on the one time when his 3 month old ass went over the railing. Punk ass cornbaby. What he needs to do is suck it up.

Deadpool Max #10
Written by David Lapham
Art by Kyle Baker
Published by Marvel Comics

As much as it pains me to say it, David Lapham is doing a good job on this one. And yes, I'm aware of the existence of Crossed Family Values and Crossed Psychopath and Crossed Babies, Babies Mamma Wanna Kill Em All (Crossed Casey Anthony?), so let it be fully underscored: I know what it means when one praises the work of David Lapham, I'm aware of where that road can lead. (That Modern Warfare 2 comic that said L1 aims, L2 rapes? I know all about that shit.) This was still good! Admittedly, the pleasures of Deadpool Max stem in huge part to its blunt refusal to be intelligent for any period of time that lasts beyond a few panels, as well as an artist whose apparent interest in "pleasing" drawings rises and fall within individual issues; shorter version, you return to it because of its out-and-out weirdness. It still feels like a Marvel comic--more so than Ennis' War Stories-tinged Max work did--but it's one of those Marvel comics that reads like it was cloned from the time the Punisher tinted his skin black, or when Spider-Man got replaced by a dude wearing an outfit from Olivia Newton John's "Let's Get Physical" videos. Plus, you know, there's impotence jokes, f-words and secret penises.

Criminal The Last Of The Innocent #2
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Published by Image Comics

I can't be the only one who is getting testy about waiting for Brubaker to write a straight up whodunit under the Criminal umbrella, and yet considering what he's doing here--an EC tinged nasty with the Archie characters, where Jughead the junkie in recovery, Betty is the laid back badass friend he should've gone for, and Veronica's the whore wife who can't be satisfied, which fits just fine with her status obsessed Archie hating Mr. Lodge--you kind of can't blame him for going with his gut. It's a clever take, better than an "Archie's Crime SuspseStories" title would've led anyone to expect. 

Uncanny X-Force #12
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Mark Brooks, Andrew Currie, Dean White & Richard Isanove
Published by Marvel Comics

It must have been an awesome moment for Richard Isanove when he got the call to work on something other than those shitty Spider-Man reprints and Dark Tower: Some More Shit That Happens Between Pages 315 and 317 of Wizard And The Glass comics, but goddamn, what a sleepy chapter in the abusive relationship that is Uncanny X-Force did he end up getting saddled with. As was mentioned in last week's comments, this issue was lots and lots of talking, and nobody got on board the X-Force train because talking roused their dick chicken. (Okay FINE, that part where Wolverine refers to Jean Grey as "handmade by God to afflict me" is a total corker.) And while there's enough Tim Riggins & Landry fans 'round here to admit that a good old fashioned won't-those-two-just-fuck subplot can keep us in our seats through the tedious moments where the glasses people babble about Muggle swing dance traditions, let's be clear: you have to make us care about Psylocke if you want us to care about who Psylocke wants to fuck. And dude: nobody ain't never gonna care about Psylocke. PS.com: since when is Fantomex not gay?

Butcher Baker The Righteous Maker #5
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Mike Huddleston
Published by Image Comics

The first chunk of this issue, leading up to the muddy-as-hell jumping jeep panel--that was a chore to get through, the kind of stuff that felt like work to read, and there's probably nothing worse you can say about a single issue comic book than "it felt like work to read". But after that--literally, the next page after that jeep panel--Butcher Baker turned itself into the comic that Joe Casey has been pimping it out to be in the backmatter essays, and this became the-mother-fuckery people should be getting into. The color on this book has been solid since issue one, but in issue 4--that panel where Times Square kept the nudie theaters and exploded into non-advertising-powered candied life--it jumped past everything else that's coming out right now (including my precious art comics about feelings and elmo dreamingz) and entered Brendan McCarthy level hallucinatory territory. This is the kind of comic that Image exists to publish, and it's the kind of thing that makes comic books seem unique again. Sleep on that shit at your peril. Lord knows you can have dipshit movie pitches if that's what makes your pant-churches steeple.

-Tucker Stone, 2011